Nick Cave Quotes

We are only puppets, our strings are being pulled by unknown forces.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely

That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

Fear is the passion of slaves.

Peoples will be as before, the sheep sent to the slaughterhouses or to the meadows as it pleases the shepherds.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

A people that patiently lets itself be trampled, deserves to be trampled and crushed.

I left Nixon, feeling ... like a very small creature, skirting the shadows of encircling powers that would not hesitate to crush me as impersonally as a steam roller crushes a bug.

Powerlessness also corrupts.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're going to get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Dependence begets subservience and venality.

You have no power or authority, of course.... Is there anything we can appear to do?

Evil wants you to think that its power is absolute, endless. It wants to so make you quake and quiver that all you'll do is fall down and worship it.

Rage swept over her at being young, young and little, as if some evil fairy had put that spell on her. Why must you be locked up in this dreadful cage of childhood for twenty or a hundred years? Nothing in life was possible unless you were old and rich, until then you were only small and futile before your tormentors, desperately waiting for the release that only years could bring.

there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

You're always feeling powerless in life. If you're in an abusive relationship or working for what we call a psychotic boss sometimes the only option is to leave because you're emotions get so entangled with these manipulative people that staying there you're just helpless because they're good at passive aggressive games and you're not, so you have to leave.

We've got to fool the fools, and plan the plans. We must rule the rules, got to stand the stands.

He wanted her. He knew where to find her. He waited. It amused him to wait, because he knew that the waiting was unbearable to her. He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and humiliating than his presence could enforce. He was giving her time to attempt an escape, in order to let her know her own helplessness when he chose to see her again.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

How can the life of such a man be in the palm of some fools hand?

Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil.

The devil is so subtle that he dominates man and persuades him at the same time that he is not being dominated.

Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.